Sunday, 4 January 2015

Fundraising money helps Elephants

Ewa and I are back in Thailand from our recent trip to Australia. It was great to catch up with family and friends. While we were in Melbourne Elephant Encounters Jenny Jeanette Dickens and Rob Dickens were kind enough to host a fund raiser for Elephantstay which raised $4,000. Also included in that total are the sales from the book For the love of Elephants and some other donations. I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for their continued support and also give you an up date on what we have been doing with the money. Those of you that have been here in the rainy season would know that the paddock where the elephants sleep can get very boggy and end up with a lot deep foot prints from the elephants. So the first thing did was get some machines in there to smooth out the paddock and remove all the waste and water. Then after the paddock had dried out we made new tethering spots for the elephants to sleep this time we concreted them. We have made 10 spots so we can rotate the elephants if some spots are getting boggy. Next we had to replace one of the drinker pots as Yitor in her excitement of bashing her pineapple plant smashed one of them. So while were doing that job we thought it would be a good time to replace the outlet valves in the other pots as all the theads had worn out over the years. We also concreted inside the pots so they would drain easier. Also in this area we have had some problems with drainage since the new road has been built so modifications have been made to improve this and are still not finished. Four new sleeping mounds have been made for our older elephants to help them get up in the mornings. Lastly at this time of the year some of our olders girls can really feel the cold so we have made some blankets to put on them on those cold nights to keep them a bit warmer. We and the Elephants thank you for your support. Michelle Reedy Operations Director Elephantstay